What I Learned at AWP

Welcome home, everyone who trekked across the country for the annual AWP conference! 

Here's the report.  I learned that Nebraska can throw you a freak snowstorm in April (we drove through it on the way there), that I am affected by altitude (huff, puff), that Denver has wild architecture and great restaurants, and that folks smoke pot right on the sidewalk.  I learned that by-invitation-only parties in penthouses are not as exciting as they sound, though it still feels nice to be on the list.  I learned that even very glamorous-looking people can sometimes need a bit of social rescuing, and that it feels good to reach out when they do.  I learned that having your partner along at a professional conference is great fun.  I remembered how lovely it can be to reconnect with friends.

I learned that I love the paintings of Moyo Ogundipe!  Holy wow.  This is the one we saw at the Denver Art Museum:

In this small venue, you can't really see the intricacies, the details, the repetitions and rhythms.  (Look at the birds, the snake, the image on the headgear.)  But please know:  the work is gorgeous.

But in more literary terms, I learned the following:

I learned that elena minor, who founded PALABRA, runs it as a complete labor of love.  She does everything herself, and she funds the production costs out of her own pocket--while working a full-time dayjob doing bookkeeping for a performing arts center.  If you've ever been interested in the journal, which promotes avant-garde work by Latin@ writers, you might consider supporting it by subscribing.  Read Francisco Aragón's interview with elena here and Marcela Landres's interview with her here.  I got to spend an hour talking with elena at the PALABRA/Con Tinta table at the book fair, and it was one of the highlights of the conference for me. 

I learned that Janice Harrington does a knockout close reading.  I heard her speak on the Black Goes Green panel, which featured contributors to Camille Dungy's anthology Black Nature, about which you've heard on here.  Some of the panelists, in addition to reading their own work, very generously offered their analyses of other poets' contributions.  Janice's close reading of Anthony Walton's "Carrion" was superb, and I trotted right over to the BOA table afterward and picked up her own collection, Even the Hollow My Body Made Is Gone, and it's excellent.  There's no guarantee that someone who's a precise, original reader and a generous, enthusiastic person will write good work, but it's sure true in this case.

I learned that I really want to read Manuel Ramos's work.  He read just a sliver on a panel of Latinas y Latinos who write mystery, and I really liked the energy and precision of his language.  All of the panelists were great, and I liked hearing them articulate how, for them, mystery novels are about social justice.  For Ramos, the  genre can provide "a sense of justice that isn't always found in real life."  Panelist Alicia Gaspar de Alba sees the detective protagonist as no better than other people, but simply "more outraged, more indignant" about injustice.

On a panel about biography, here were the quotable quotes: 

Bob Root:  "Even if I don't entirely catch the person I'm tracking, I can bring the pursuit alive for the reader."

Kim Stafford, quoting the advice his father William Stafford gave him about where to put his writing energies:  "Do the thing that's trying to happen.  Do the thing that's most alive." 

Honor Moore, quoting the advice Arthur Miller gave her when he read a draft of her biographical work:  "Throw away the research and write it like a novel.  You are the authority.  We will come to know her through you."  (This was after she'd totally immersed herself in the research and knew all the facts intimately.)

Honor Moore:  "Write the hot spots."

I also learned that Nick Flynn and Natasha Trethewey have reading voices of gold.  They were on a panel for the new anthology The Art of Losing, edited by Kevin Young, and seriously, there should have been a table of hankies at the end of every aisle.  Such gorgeous pieces, so well read.

And that's me, really. 

We got home late Sunday night to this:

Okay, so it looks a little like a cage, alarmingly, but I couldn't be more excited.  Drywall will make a difference.  Here's Spyder, looking coy: